


Lost in Paradox Space

by Callmesalticidae, DaneelsSoul, shadow_wasserson



Series: Building From Scratch [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dream Bubbles, F/M, Harleys nerding out, Humans are insane, Matchmaking, Mentions of Cancer, Meteorstuck, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, SCIENCE!, Tough love therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaneelsSoul/pseuds/DaneelsSoul, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_wasserson/pseuds/shadow_wasserson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TG: wasnt this the time when jade showed up and finally got karkat to pull his head out of his ass<br/>CG: CAN WE PLEASE GET SOMEONE ELSE TO DO THE SUMMARIES?<br/>TG: oh yeah asshole id like to see you do better<br/>CG: CHALLENGE FUCKING ACCEPTED.<br/>CG: IN WHICH OUR PROTAGONIST, FACED WITH THE SHADOWY THREAT OF IMPENDING MORTALITY, HAS AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS, ARGUES WITH HIS OVERPROTECTIVE LUSUS, CONFRONTS HIS PAST, COURTS A NEW MOIRAIL, AND UNCOVERS HIS DESTINY. CONTAINS PORTRAYAL OF ILLNESS, A NUDE MINOR, XENOROMANCE, AND PUBLIC INEBRIATION.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dreams of Home

**Author's Note:**

> Act 2 of Building from Scratch

_ February 14th, Year 1 of Sweep 2 _

You are Karkat Vantas, and you are trying to figure out where you are. Well, not exactly-- you know that you’re in a dream bubble. You aren’t stupid. You know what’s going on when you find yourself on an island. 

But whose island? It is full of ruins, and verdant tropical plants. And it is very bright. The brightness, of course, makes you think of Kanaya, but perhaps Aradia was involved as well. Or it belongs to one of the hum-- 

You see the fake Rose come out from a large mass of shrubbery. “Hello,” she says cheerily. Too cheerily for a Rose, you think, but maybe she has something up her sleeve. 

You glance around. “Who else is here? Is this your memory?” 

“No, not mine. I don’t know for sure who it belongs to, either, although I can make a couple of guesses. Or maybe four. Did you read  _ Bloodchild _ yet?” 

“Yeah I did. It was like some kind of ungodly fiduspawn erotic fanf--” 

You shut up. There’s someone else. It takes a moment, but the sound eventually resolves into words. “I will be fine! This is a perfectly deadly gun and it shoots lots of incredibly deadly bullets! Oh, will you just stop it. I am going now! Goodbye!” 

“Ooh. Guns,” says the fake Rose, but you ignore her. That… That sounded like  _ Jade _ . You’re in Jade’s dream bubble. And she’s coming this way. 

Before you can decide what to do, Jade comes into the clearing and, a second later, you find yourself at the business end of a rifle. “Who are you? What are you doing with Rose? And, uh, why do you have horns?” 

Rose slips her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “This may come as a shock to you but you are, how should I put it, living-impaired. And so am I. But my friend,” she says, now pointing at you, “is not. He is just visiting.” 

“No, I’m not dead,” you feel the need to confirm. “God, you’re a pain. Jade, it’s me. It’s Karkat.”

Jade seems to shiver. She blinks, and turns to you. “Wait. This isn’t how this happened before… I… Oh, Karkat? This is what you look like?” She smiles. 

“You  _ do _ know each other,” Rose says. “Spectacular. Unless you hated each other. But it does not appear as though that is the case.” She looks thoughtful. “I wonder what my house looks like…” she says to herself. 

“Yeah, he’s been trolling me on and off for a while now… um… depending on when exactly now is.” 

“Sometime after you died,” Rose says. “That’s when it is.”

“You must have split off from the main timeline. I’m pretty sure Alpha Jade isn’t dead,” you say. “I hope not.” 

“We’ll never know for sure, will we?” Rose says, and you turn to stare at her. 

“How do you know that?” You demand.

“Look at that, you have a wonderful reunion here, isn’t that true? Let’s concentrate on that,” she says, but you aren’t having any of it. 

“Fuck, it was Rose, wasn’t it?” You demand. “I mean, the other Rose.  _ my _ Ro-”

“What about Rose?”

“Does she tell you everything?”

“Karkat, what are you talking about?” Jade asks. “Rose is right there, of course she tells herself everything.” 

The fake Rose holds her hands up. “Jade, this may come as another surprise to you, but I am not the Rose that you are familiar with. In fact, the Jade with whom I made  _ my _ acquaintance was surnamed Lalonde.” 

“And both Roses are tactless--” you interject.

“You must have a lot of catching up to do,” she says, pulling out a pack of what the other Ampora had said were called ‘cigarettes.’ “Since one of you is dead. I wonder how that happened. It must be a really interesting story.” 

“I… I… don’t remember?” Jade looks a little disoriented by all of this.

“Should have remembered to bring a lighter,” Rose mutters to herself. 

“Oh, allow me,” Jade says as she takes out a small welding torch. 

“Oh, fantastic!” The end of the cigarette starts to glow and release smoke. “I never had the habit before, but cigarettes cannot kill you if you are already dead. Want one? Either of you?” 

Jade declines, but you don’t have enough presence of mind to do anything but stare at Rose for a moment. “Wait, so you light it on fire and put it… in your mouth?” 

“Exactly.” 

“Humans are insane.”

“Gee, thanks Karkat,” Jade says. “Anyway, I would like to go see if my dog is where I found him earlier. You’re welcome to tag along.” 

“Sure,” Rose says, and like that you find yourself having to abide the company of the fake Rose for a little while longer. “What brings you to the underworld tonight, Karkat? Did you bring your obolus for Boatman Charon? You did say that you are not dead, right?” 

You ignore her. 

“Speaking of not-dead people, did the rest of my friends make it through the game okay?” 

“Yes,” Rose says. “They probably died lots of times, like they did in my timeline, but that’s fine. Dying is just a thing that happens. It’s when you don’t come back that there is a problem. In fact, you are probably okay too. The main you, I mean. But we won’t know until that you dies. I wonder how quantum immortality works with this, actually…” 

“Well, I think that waveform cancellation through the time loops is involved in reinforcing the alpha timeline over the doomed ones,” Jade responds. “But it’s been awhile since I brushed up on that stuff.” 

All you can do is stare. 

“And one’s personal stream of consciousness would still be maintained through dream bubbles,” Rose continues.

“Dream bubbles? Don’t recall hearing about those.” 

“That is what we are in. Duat. Shadowland. Underworld. Mictlan. Dead People Land. Normal people need not apply, however. You have to have played Sburb.” 

“Oh. Huh. They do a really poor job telling you about the afterlife.” 

“They do,” Rose agrees. 

“Well, I was supposed to have played today. And I had everything set up, but…” Jade suddenly stops, and her clear green eyes go white. “But… John wasn’t there, and I didn’t have a server player to let me into the Medium.” 

“Goddammit, Terezi,” you mutter. 

“Oh gosh. John’s okay, isn’t he!?” 

“John’s with you. I don’t know. We got separated and I don’t think we’ll ever really meet each other outside of these bubbles.” 

Jade looks relieved. 

“It’s okay,” you say. “You two are probably better off than we are.” 

“Don’t sell yourself short, Karkat,” Rose says. “That is to say, you are not stuck here yet, are you? Which is not to say that this is not a wonderful place. Because it is. But it would also be nice to have freedom of movement.” 

“That’s not what I meant,” you clarify with some annoyance. “I meant that Jade and John might actually get where they’re going.”

“The other versions of you will, won’t they? And meanwhile you can be invested in your own pursuits. Or did you  _ want _ to fight a horrible battle against… whoever it was?” 

“Goddammit, I don’t have an ‘own pursuits’”, you insist.

“What do you do when you are not saving the universe? I seem to recall that you liked romances.” 

“‘Liking romance’ is a goddamn hobby, not a life. What, am I gonna be a romantic novelist? On the meteor? Shit! Failed as a leader. Failed as a God. Failed as a fucking-- could never have  _ been _ a fucking soldier!”

“Well Karkat, it sounds like you need some new hobbies!” Jade offers. “Have you considered gardening?”

“No, I have not been gardening on the meteor. I really don’t think that would work.”

“Hydroponics, maybe?” Rose says. 

“Well, you’d need artificial sunlight,” Jade replies. 

“I’m sure that they can appearify that. Or alchemize it. Make it somehow.” 

“Ngh. Dream sunlight is bad enough,” you say, squinting. 

Rose laughs. 

“Not as bad as Alternia, but still.”

“Fungi don’t need light,” Rose notes. “He could be a fungus farmer. Like a dwarf.” 

“Ooh! Yes. Karkat, you could do that!” 

“Oh my God. This is--Just forget it. This is stupid. I don’t have a ‘thing’ and you know what? No-one does. You know what Terezi does all day? She tries to annoy Dave. You know what Dave does all day? He tries to annoy me. Kanaya sews. Rose drinks. Who the fuck knows what Gamzee does but it’s probably no better. No one has a thing. There’s no fucking point to doing things.” 

“Well fuck,” Rose says. “I need to find a copy of  _ Man’s Search for Meaning _ . Give you a helping of Viktor Frankl and Albert Camus. Is there a Troll Viktor Frankl, by any chance? He would probably have been a lowblood.” 

“Well, that’s actually a name,” you admit. “So congratulations, but I don’t know.” 

“I hope that there is,” Rose continues. “Troll Viktor Frankl would be fantastic to read.” 

“Whatever,” you say. “I’m done here. I don’t have your book in my sylladex right now. I’ll get it to you next time.” 

“Hey. Stop it,” Rose says. “You are not going anywhere until we find out who to use to teach you, I don’t know what you call it, Troll Existentialism perhaps. You probably have a name for it.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you snap back.

“Basically, it is your own damn fault if you are miserable right now.” 

“Yeah, Mr. Grumpy Pants,” Jade chimes in. “You’re not leaving until we’ve fixed that attitude.” 

“Look at it like this,” Rose says. “You have been freed from the tyranny of superimposed purpose. You have been locked into a stable time loop your entire life. Choices? You had no choices. But now you  _ do _ . Because according to what I have heard, you have found yourself delivered into an offshoot timeline. If there are stable time loops left to fill for your main self, well, that doesn’t matter. You, sir, have free will. You are so depressed that you don’t realize how lucky you are. You can’t even say, ‘Oh, but I have to go save the universe by going to this other Earth, so on and so forth’ because you won’t ever reach it. Paradox Space has just giving you a magic cardboard box and told you that you can make it into whatever it is that you want it to be.” 

“Okay sure, here’s what I’m going to do with my life. I’m going to shove it so far up your nook that you’ll--” 

“Oh heyy, guys! I musst have dozed offf there…” 

Oh god. You did  _ not _ need this. It’s  _ your _ Rose. Well probably your Rose. Well  _ some _ drunk Rose in any case. Goddammit. 

“Oh my. I always imagined myself being more sober. What happened to you?” the fake Rose says. 

“Rose!” Jade runs over and gives her a hug. 

Rose, the real one, stumbles at her embrace. “Welll, I wass you seee. Until the alchomohol came.” 

“Wait, you never actually met her?” You ask the fake Rose.

“No, we just chatted. On keyboards.” 

“I thought you two were deep in cahoots.” 

“When you are dealing with a lot of technical medical information,” she says, “it is better to have it where you eyes can see it. Besides, we process information better by reading it.” She holds out a hand for the drunken Rose. 

“Nize to finaly meet youu.” Rose awkwardly manages to get a hand out as she disengages from Jade. 

“Great,” you say. “Perfect. Shit.”

“Wassa matter this time Karkat?” 

“Nothing at all,” you growl. 

And then you, who are  _ not sick _ , and do  _ not need _ technical medical information shared about you, stomp off. You sure hope nobody tries to follow you.

===> JADE: Follow Karkat

You are Jade Harley, and you have just recently found out that you are dead. And you have two Roses to talk to, even if one of them is drunk and the other one has your last name. 

Apparently they’ve known of each other for some time. 

“I guess that you haven’t helped him to figure things out?” You-Rose, that is the one that is sorta you, the one that grew up with your grandpa, says. Or her version of your grandpa. Argh this is confusing. Anyway, you-Rose said that thing. 

“I thhink I need to siit that t-roll down on a couch sommetime. Probablly. Llusus isssues,” says Rose-Rose. You know, the one that is actually Rose. You mean like your Rose. So you’ll call her Ro- OK, yes, it is pretty dumb, but you are sticking with it, so there.

“I’ll have to remind you about it when you’re sober, but just so you know: it isn’t looking good. Also: cigarette?” You-Rose holds one out for Rose-Rose. “Jade has a welding torch.” 

Rose-Rose hiccups. “I thhink I’m good in the slowly killingg mythelf department, thankss.” 

“Oh, that’s right. You aren’t dead.” You-Rose laughs, then looks out after Karkat. “We should follow him,” she says, and then she does just that. You and Rose go after her, one of you staggering drunkenly and the other supporting the former. 

“The paranoia is definitely a thing. And perhaps he was not hugged often enough as a wiggler. Do animal monster surrogate parents hug their children? Maybe that was why their empire was so messed up. And to think, all those wars and all that bloodshed and hatred would have been averted, if only their monster parents had hugged them.” 

“I thin thad a cross-culshural survey is called for.” 

As you continue walking, the lush green tropical foliage blends into the well-trampled lawns of… somewhere else. Alternia, Rose-Rose tells you. The bright day fades to cool night, and two moons hang up above. The night air is filled with distant chirping and screeching. 

“Well, that can’t be good. Unless it is. Is screeching good?” You-Rose asks. 

“That tree is an odd color,” you remark. 

“It is,” You-Rose agrees.  

“I wonder if that means that their sun outputs in a different spectrum than ours,” you muse.

“I have heard that it is very bright. One of the trolls was blinded, looking at it.” 

“Screeee!” something says, very far away. None of you are interested in finding out what it was. 

You are standing in front of the house that you thought you saw Karkat disappear into, when some sort of giant arthropod suddenly skitters out from behind a bush and  _ screeches _ , raising its claws against you and clacking them. You jump back and half-ready your gun. 

“Whoa! Hey! What!” exclaims You-Rose. 

“Oh, hii there crab thiing.” Rose-Rose walks slightly toward it, making pincer movements with her hands. “How are yyou doin?” 

The giant Crab Thing screeches again. It starts to lunge at Rose-Rose when Karkat reappears. “STOP! God you stupid lusus, stop it!” He steps between the… lusus, and Rose-Rose, and the monster stops its charge. “No. These are Friends.  _ Friends _ .”

“Aww,” You-Rose says. “I knew you cared.” 

“SCREE!” 

“Look. Yes I know that ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ are the same word. That’s not what I mean.”

“GREEEECH!”

“Kar--Karkat. Wass your daddy always so reluctant about you havving friensh over?”

“Tell him that Rose is your moirail!” You-Rose suggests, and you wonder what that is.

“Fuck you!” Karkat yells. And then, to the lusus: “You have to learn to tell the difference between a trespasser and a guest, okay?”

“REEEEEEEETCH!”

“Yesh. Verry interesting. Lemme jusht take some notes here.” 

“No, I don’t have to tell you beforehand when friends are coming over.” Karkat yells. “I’m eight fucking sweeps. I can--”

“SCREE!” 

“Fine! Okay. Fine, just let it go. God!”

As you lower your weapon, You-Rose sidles up beside Karkat. “Mr. Crab Monster Vantas, I was wondering. Did you hug Karkat enough, in your opinion, or do you regret the lack of hugging in your relationship? Be honest now.” 

“Heyyy! Whosse the psychotherapisht here! You trying to edge in on my turfs?” 

You-Rose turns to Rose-Rose. “I’m your, I don’t know, your psycho-nurse. Doctors have nurses. Head doctors have head nurses. So a psychotherapist, being a doctor, should have a psycho-nurse.” 

“Pfst. Fine. Why donsha go take down tha pasheint’s family hishtory or somefing?” 

“You’ll notice that that was what I was doing. The crab hadn’t answered yet, though.” 

“Wah kinna nurse cand speak crab?” 

“I can speak crab!” You-Rose protests. “I was just doing it. But the crab isn’t talking back.” 

“Oh. Carry on then,” Rose-Rose says. She leans over to you and whispers, “Besh nurse ever.” 

“Oh my God,” Karkat exclaims. “You are stupid. Communicating with a lusus isn’t just a matter of  _ talking _ . You need the right tone and the right posture and inflection, which is different for  _ every _ kind of lusus!”

“Soooo, Karkar. How did your over protectiv daaad make you feeeeel?” 

“Karkar.” You-Rose snorts. “I can’t tell if that’s the drunkenness or a pet name.” 

“Why can’t it be bodth?”

“Oh my  _ god _ ,” Karkat moans.

“Is that why you reacted so badly?” You-Rose asks. “DId I put her in the wrong quadrant? I apologize.” 

“Oh my God,” Karkat yells. “No. Fuck!” 

“Kismesis?”

“I am not in a quadrant with Rose,” Karkat insists. “Oh my God!”

“Yesh. It would be mosh unprofeshional of me.” 

“SCREEE?” interrupts the lusus. 

“Fucking no! No! I’m not in a relationship with an alien! I’m not-”

“What? What do aliens have to do with it?” You-Rose demands. “That sounds speciesist.” 

The crab-monster tilts its head at Karkat. 

“NO I--”

“REEETCH?” 

“Hmmm… Doesh your dad dishaprove of interspecies romanticisms?” 

“WRRRRAAAAAAACTK? EEEERK!” 

“I broke up with him okay?” Karkat mutters to the crab monster. 

Rose-Rose gasps. “Waaaa? Wish Dave?” 

You-Rose turns to Rose-Rose. “He was in a quadrant with Dave? Kismesis or moirail? Or was Terezi not Dave’s matesprit at the time?”

“I’m not talking to you!” Karkat hollers. “I’m trying to have a fucking conversation with my lusus here!” Karkat turns to the giant crab. “Gamzee just wasn’t reciprocating and I don’t blame him. Look, I don’t care if you thought we were a cute couple--”

“EEEEEERRRRRK!”

“If Karkat’s lusus is here,” You-Rose says softly to you, “then who wants to bet that there is another Karkat here too? Want to find him? Then you can have a dead Karkat to be friends with as well, since this not-dead Karkat won’t be as reliable if you want to hang out.”

The lusus walks up to Karkat and leans in, nibbling at his hair. 

“No! God. Not in front of my friends! I don’t want to talk about this here.”

“EEERK EERK.”

As Karkat and his lusus squabble, You-Rose slowly directs you and Rose-Rose in the direction of Karkat’s house. 

“No, I don’t need you to ‘set me up with a nice lowblood’. Oh God, that would be horrible.”

“REEEEACH?”

“Not because of the blood! It’s embarrassing to have your lusus set you up..”

The hive, as you are told it is called, is tall and blocky, decorated with dark grey and a bit of red. Only one light is on, near the top of the hive.

You-Rose and Rose-Rose debate the likelihood of triggering a bomb if you just walk up to the door and knock on the door. Having decided that there shouldn’t be a problem, You-Rose walks up to do the honors. 

“Oh. It’s already a bit open. Well, come along, you two.”


	2. Enter the Hugmeister

_ February 14th, Year 1 of Sweep 2 _

You are Jade Harley, and you are walking into an alien house for the very first time. The place is unlit and dark. There are books and movies scattered around, and some sort of television-like device. There are rooms to your left and right, and a stairwell.

“You go on,” Rose-Rose says as You-Rose examines the books. “I needs to look after tha pashient.” 

“That’s a lot of movies,” you observe, following behind You-Rose. “He and John must get along splendidly.” 

You-Rose assembles a stack of books as she moves from shelf to shelf, and then heads deeper into the house. “Let’s check upstairs. That’s where the light was.” 

You follow her upstairs, and into a room on the right. It has a light on, though it’s dim. There is a computer on the desk and several posters, and a dresser. And some sort of flattened pinecone with softly luminescent green goo inside. A “recuperacoon” is what You-Rose calls it. There’s some sort of tube coming out of the goo-filled hole. 

“That is where he sleeps. But he isn’t here. And yes, trolls sleep in the pool. It actually sounds fun.” 

The tube twitches. 

Rose walks up and addresses it. “Oh! Hello Karkat. We are alien fairies, come to say hello. And also that you are dead. So are we. Quite a corpse party. So there are some things that you don’t have to worry about. Being killed because you are a mutant. Being killed because of a freak accident. Things like that. Karkat?” 

“Wait. He’s a mutant? Are all the other trolls different somehow?” you ask. “Like is he actually the only troll with horns, and he just happened to be the only one I’ve met?” 

“No. It’s the blood color. They have different colors of blood.” 

“Anyway,” you say, “you shouldn’t go around just  _ telling  _ people that they’re dead. It can be very disconcerting. I should know.” 

You-Rose shrugs. “It is best to swallow the bitter pill quickly. But we can table that for now,” she adds as the light shifts inside the recuperacoon and the tube twitches again.

“How do we get his attention?” you ask. You knock on the recuperacoon. You-Rose follows suit. 

The light inside the recuperacoon shifts again. 

“So are we… the ghosts of Christmas Present and Future? And Christmas Past is outside? Oh, and a brief forewarning, Jade, trolls react badly to aliens.” 

You back up a couple of steps and smile at the recuperacoon. Maybe you could have dressed up like a real alien if you had had the time. 

Something very suddenly  _ launches _ out of the recuperacoon, stark naked, hissing and snarling, brandishing what looks like a CPR mask as a weapon. It’s… It’s a  _ tiny _ Karkat, you realize, maybe seven or eight years old if trolls age like humans do. He lands on his feet, screaming, and pushes his way past the two of you. He grabs the doorknob and… collapses in a coughing fit. 

“We come from the future,” You-Rose says. “You get three wishes.” 

The little Karkat leans against the door for support, apparently struggling to stand. You-Rose steps over and tries to help him up, then catches your attention. She nods to the door and… oh. She must want you to get between them and the door. 

You reposition yourself, and then immediately abandon your post upon spotting some clothing for the poor thing. 

“No, n-no…” Little Karkat’s coughing seems to subside. He uses his regained breath to turn and snarl. “I won’t go easy!” 

“Jade, can you hold Karkat here?” 

“I’ll fight to my last breath!” Little Karkat coughs again. 

“You sound about ready to be on your last breath without our assistance.” 

He bares his teeth, looking terrified. You slip a shirt over his head while he’s distracted, and then You-Rose pulls out a knife. Before you can do anything she cuts her hand, and then puts it in front of Little Karkat. “We aren’t going to hurt you.” 

“Is that-- Oooh…” you say. 

“Wh-why are--...” He staggers toward the dresser and grabs a pair of pants, coughing intermittently. He slides to the floor and sits down. He swallows. “If you… know… and you’re not here to kill me… Why are you here?” 

“Because we’re the ghosts of Christmas Present and Christmas Future, and we want to tell you some things, so that you don’t develop to be a great big grumpy puss. Christmas Past wanted to make it too but she’s too drunk.” 

Then Karkat, the older one, bursts into the room. Little Karkat freezes in shock. 

“Oh my god!” Karkat, the new one- or maybe you should say the old one, the one that just burst in - shouts. “Stop right now! Oh God.”

“We were having a moment, Karkat!” scolds You-Rose. 

“Get out!” He replies. “This is my room, get out!”   


“We were just…” you say, trailing off. 

“We were going to make a less-grumpy Karkat.” You-Rose turns to Little Karkat. “Karkat, this is you from the future. He is very irritable. But I want you to know that you don’t have to be.” 

Rose-Rose stumbles in, out of breath. “Hey Karkats. Why you gottaaa have so many shtairs?” 

“Look at that, Christmas Past is here.” 

“Wha? I ghosta show him allll the olshd holiday memnories and how he gotshta be… whatever he is thash bad?”

Little Karkat stares. “I’m… I must be ten sweeps old at least!”

“Yes. You are pretty old,” You-Rose says. “And grumpy.” 

“No,” Karkat corrects. “You’re eight sweeps. I’m eight sweeps. Oh God, look at you.”

Little Karkat starts coughing again. “I think I must be dreaming.” 

“Sort of,” You-Rose says. 

“Thasht a-bout right acshually,” Rose-Rose says. 

Karkat looks at his younger self and wrinkles his nose. “Ugh, you’re sick, aren’t you? I remember that one. That was a bad one. I got so sick I couldn’t even walk straight. Missed a solid perigee of schoolfeed, and had to send my lusus out to hunt for food because I wasn’t getting credits. That was horrible.” 

“Interesting,” You-Rose says. “Do trolls often get that sick?” 

“He almost died, you know that?” Karkat responds. “Another lusus nearly ate him, and thank God he grows claws back because you wouldn’t have survived if he didn’t.”

Little Karkat swallows. “I know.”

“All because you got sick.”

“I know!"

“Shoo you shpent a losht of your childhood shick? How’s you feelsh about that?” 

You-Rose pulls you off to the side a bit. “Jade, I think that what Karkat might need now is a hug. Do you think that you could take care of that for me?” 

“Yes. Of course.” 

“Make it a really good one. Karkat is about to explode.” 

You nod.

Karkat, meanwhile, is still busy ranting. “I can’t believe you. You know that, so why do you get sick again in like four sidereals? Wasn’t as bad, but you still miss a few nights and you get so worried that you don’t sleep. And when you don’t sleep you don’t get better, you stupid--”

You glomp Karkat, and he shuts up. “Karkat, it’s okay.” 

“Get off me!” He yells at you. 

“Not until you calm down.” 

“I need to tell this stupid wiggler all the ways he made my life miserable.  _ Let me go! _ ”

“Fine,” you reply. “But you yelling at little-you is not okay, okay? It’s not his fault.”

“Of course it’s his fault!” Karkat continues. “He’s the one who was always getting sick! You think it was easy? I had to study twice as hard during my free time just to get the credits to make up for when I was a fucking wreck, and I couldn’t always do that. I’m not the smartest, that was Sollux, and not the most patriotic, that was Eridan or Equius, and...And yeah, it got easier when I had others to send me credits occasionally,” he says, growing quieter. “But fuck, I was not going to make myself a charity case. Might as well message the drones with ‘cull me now’!”

You push Karkat back to arm’s length and look him in the eye. “No. Karkat, it’s not your fault that you got sick!” 

“Getting sick is just asking to be culled, Jade. Literally  _ begging  _ for it. I’m frankly amazed they never caught me.” 

“Maybe. But this is Not Your Fault.” 

“I’m studying hard!” protests Little Karkat. “I’ll make it! I’m going to be a threshecutioner!”

“You’re just a memory!” Karkat yells back.

You hug Karkat again. He growls and tries to get free of you, but darn it you are going to be stubborn about this whole calming down thing.

“He just means that relatively,” You-Rose explains to Little Karkat. “Because you’re in his past. You are not going to be a threshie… a whatever you said. You are going to go far away and make a whole new universe, where you will be free from the empire, and you will be safe.” 

“...Yeah, I’m definitely dreaming,” Little Karkat says. “I’m going to try to fly now. That should be fun.” 

“No. Do not do that. That is not a thing which you are allowed to do.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because you will die. You do not have flying powers.” 

“Yes I do, I-I… I do. I do have flying powers!” 

“No, you--,” You-Rose begins to say, but she stops as Little Karkat begins to change and look… not so little. 

“No, I definitely have flying powers,” he says. “I remember them. When I… was… heroic.” 

“Ohhh… Okay.” 

“Pssst.” Rose-Rose mock whispers “I think thish is a different Karkar.” 

“It was during the game.” The new Karkat’s eyes widen and turn white. You notice a cape. Did he always have a cape? Is that how he was able to fly? “That was really fucking weird.” 

“You went fucking God Tier and you still died?” Karkat snarls, but the fight seems to be going out of him for good so you let up on the hugs.

“Nice to meet you too,” the other Karkat replies. 

You-Rose seems to be enjoying the situation though. “What to call you two”, she wonders out loud. “Grumpy and nice? How’s that? You seem pretty chill.” She presses on without waiting for a response, “You are doing much better in the ‘well-mannered’ department. I wonder why. Are you quadrants full?” 

“That’s…. kind of a very personal question.” 

“Do it for schience,” Rose-Rose pipes in. “We can find out why Karkatsh grumy eshperimentally.”

“Well, I nominate Jade for whatever the heck it is she's doing awesomely”, You-Rose responds. “Jade, do you want to be Karkat's official hugmeister, in charge of giving him hugs if he needs to cool down?”

Hugs sound like an excellent plan. You salute and give You-Rose a goofy grin. “Yes, ma’am.” 

“Excellent.” 

“Wait, what?” Karkat interjects, blushing a blotchy red. “What is happening here?”

You look back at Karkat. “Do we need to go through this again?”

“It’s called a blind date. It happens in human cultures all the time,” You-Rose says. 

“What?” You ask. ”A date?”  

“Jade, trolls get funny about this kind of thing. Just chalk it up to being a cross-cultural oddity and ignore it.” 

“Er, uh, okay,” you say, feeling a little more nervous now. 

You-Rose grins at you. “Basically, you are his assigned best friend. Because he really needs one.” 

“Are you seriously doing this?” Karkat asks.

“Yes,” You-Rose says, and then she straightens her coat and heads for the door. “Now on to more important matters.”

While you’re busy trying to figure out what just happened, maybe you could be someone else for a while. Like You-Rose maybe. She seems to know what’s going on.

====> Jade: Be You-Rose

You are now You-Rose. Or are in the sense that you are you and are also a Rose. Actually, the Lalonde Rose might consider herself a You-Rose as well by the same logic. In other words, it makes absolutely no sense for you to be using Jade’s terminology in your own internal monologue, especially when you have no way of knowing that Jade was using it in the first place. You decide to cease this silly line of reasoning to go back to being Rose Harley and actually paying attention as the other Rose starts talking to you.

“Hey you. Did you jshust make up a new quadrant?” Rose asks before you have the chance to get to More Important Matters. 

“Perhaps. If hugmeister isn’t being a moirail then I suppose that I did.” 

“Okay, this is new,” says Better Karkat. “Kind of horrifically entertaining. Like a trainwreck.” 

“I like you,” you say. “We should talk sometime. I like troll romance lit, but the louder Karkat isn’t always around. Maybe I could borrow some books from you, and lend you some of my own. At this moment, however, I have some questions for you. Did you often get sick when you were young?” 

“Uh? Well, I--” 

“Don’t answer that,” the  _ other _ Karkat yells. “Don’t say a fucking word!”

“Don’t listen to your grumpy self,” you say. “Does he seem like the kind of self to listen to?” 

“Shit, it’s not like they don’t already know,” says one Karkat to the other. “I probably got sick maybe… five or six times a sweep?” he tells you. “Sometimes very badly, as in this memory.” 

Unless you’re overlooking something, either the Antineoplastic Trait is not solely concerned with cancer, or Karkat was able to develop cancer several times a year and fight it back each time. The first possibility sounds more likely, but you can’t really rule the second out just yet. 

“We’re not sure how your immune system really works,” you say, “but however it does, we think that it isn’t doing too well.” 

“I’m already dead, what the fuck is going to happen?” asks the dead Karkat. 

“Well,  _ you’re _ dead. But this one is still alive. Just maybe not for much longer.” 

“What the fuck are you on about?” says the considerably-less calm Karkat. He sounds angry, but a little hoarse too. Desperate. “You keep going on about how I’m so lucky to be stuck out here. How the hemospectrum doesn’t matter and shit! What a lucky little shit Karkat is! Oh, but it’s a doomed timeline! So when is Lord English gonna come and kill us all, huh? Why does my blood matter if it’s a doomed timeline and there’s no hemospectrum any--” He cuts off as Jade glomps him again. 

“You don’t have to worry about that! I am certain that the size of the infinity of total universes is greater than the size of the infinity of Lords English,” you assure him. “But the other thing… Yes. That might kill you. The short version is that trolls have two mechanisms at war with each other: one is a hard-coded disposition toward developing cancer, and the other one is  _ something _ , some protein or cell or something that  _ fights _ cancer, which I call the Antineoplastic Trait. And possibly other things,” you add, looking at the Karkat who’s still alive. 

“The Trait seems to have some relation to the hemospectrum: there’s more of it, or it works better, as you go up. Other data support this hypothesis as well: there are some problems with our methods, but a tentative survey suggests that there are a couple of hundred Amporas who died from what appears to have been autoimmune disease. About half as many Makaras seem to have died in the same manner, and this continues to scale down until, among the lowbloods, we have a small number dying from something  _ else _ , something other than autoimmune disorder. Numbers on  _ other  _ Violets and Purples, which we got from everyone but especially from a few Kanayas, seem to maintain the pattern. I would really like to interview older trolls or, even better, get my hands on actual medical data from Alternia or Beforus, but as it is this is the best that I can do.” 

“What?” Karkat- the chill one- interjects. “But you just said that highbloods--”

“Mother Nature likes her trade-offs,” you say. “My theory is that lowbloods are closer to the troll ancestral stock than highbloods are. Somewhere along the line, some trolls started to produce the A-Trait in greater quantities, improving their resistance to cancer. The A-Trait isn’t terribly bright, and in the course of fighting against cancerous cells-- and possibly other things-- there is a chance that the system will turn against itself. You might think of it as the A-Trait getting a cancer of its own, although that probably isn’t the literal truth. Considering that more lowbloods survive to reproductive age than highbloods it actually might not have been that good of a mutation, but it manages to survive, probably because highbloods who don’t succumb to autoimmune disease in childhood usually go on to live for centuries, passing on their genes--or whatever trolls have--for that whole time.” 

“So what you’re saying is…” Living Karkat trails off. 

“You don’t have to worry about autoimmune disease, but right now the evidence suggests that there isn’t anything to counteract your body’s natural tendency to develop cancerous cells. That you got sick so often suggests that the A-Trait performs some other functions of an immune system. Not all, of course, or you shouldn’t have lived this long at all, but some. But you are probably prone to cancer, at the very least.” 

“Prone?” Karkat demands. “Like what, like how prone?”

“We don’t know,” you say. 

“It might shtill be nofing,” Rose adds. “Still trying to run shome more tests.” 

“Well that’s really fucking helpful!”

“Jusht maybe try to avoid radiashions?” 

“Oh my God,” Karkat responds. “The entire meteor is radioactive. Jegus! Is that honestly it? That’s your advice?”

“Ooh! I knowsh. We could alchemishe you a lead suit! You could be ironmans!” 

“What the fuck? Are you all being serious right now?”

“Well, Rose isn’t doing a very good job of it,” you say, “but yes.”

Karkat’s expression kind of fades to blank, and his shoulders slump. “Great. Well. I needed some good news right now.” 

Jade pats him on the back. 

“Do you know anything about your Ancestor?” You ask. “That could give us an idea.” 

“Are you talking about Kankri? He died during the game!” 

“Your Ancestor in your universe.” 

“He’s...not something I want to talk about.”

You turn to the other Karkat. “I don’t know about Kankri,” he says. “But my ancestor is kind of hard not to know.”

“Hey guys,” Jade interjects. “Maybe you could go outside? I think maybe Karkat has had enough to deal with for a bit.”

Right. You will do that. Just once you finish this. “Well, however long he lived, we might justifiably assume that Karkat has around that long. Longer, actually. More sterile environment.” 

Jade seems to be glaring at you. 

“Hey, that's good news, isn't it,” you say. “I'm trying to work on good news. And Chillkat here just implied that his Ancestor was famous or something which means he had to live long enough to do something important, right?”

Jade is still glaring at you. Fine. Maybe you can finish this discussion elsewhere. You shrug and turn around. As soon as you’ve left, and the Karkat has closed the door behind you, you resume your very important business, which unfortunately, will have to wait until another chapter.


	3. It's a Small World After All

You are Rose Harley. The new Karkat you just met has apparently been kicked out of his own room so that the discussion between you, he and your Lalondian counterpart can continue without disturbing the other Karkat too extensively. Eventually, the three of you decide the retire to the kitchen, excuse you, you mean the gormandizement chamber, in order to give Jade and Karkat some privacy. You leave with some reluctance, wishing that you could stick around to see how the date you set up would play out.

You are eventually taken away from your thoughts as Karkat speaks up. “That's still fucking bizarre.”

“What is?” you reply. “Xenophilia or people living on a meteor?"

“No, that you're trying to set up my alternate selves. It's really uncomfortable.”

“Sorry,” you say. “If it helps, I view you as two different people who happen to share a large amount of genetic material. Like clones. With pretty similar histories up to a point, I suppose. But my point is that you are different people. My opinion of him doesn't affect my opinion of you, et cetera et cetera.”

“Fine. Sure. Whatever.”

You all pass in companionable silence until you reach Karkat’s quite well stocked kitchen. It seems surprisingly well stocked.

“This is a lot more food than I remember having when I was sick,” Karkat says.

“Bubbles are malleable. You'll get the hang of it.”

“Dreambublies are weird that way,” Rose agrees. “Conshentrate hard enough and the food will probably go poof.”

“Why would I want it to go 'poof'? I want to eat it.”

“Then don't think too hard about it not being shupposed to be there.”

“So what was the rest of your session like,” you ask Karkat. “Did anyone else make god tier?”

Karkat rummages through the fridge. "Eridan did, but we all had to fight him. That's how I died."

“Well. I hope he died. It doesn’t sound like he was being very courteous.” The conversation lulls for a moment before you start things back up again. “So you don't want to be involved with setting up the troll upstairs. What about other random people?” You gently elbow your doppleganger beside you. “Rose here only has a matesprit, which surely means that there are some other folks on the meteor we need to fit into her quadrants.”

“Matchmaking was more Nepeta's thing,” Karkat replies, “but if you need advice, I'd be happy to lend a nub or two.”

Rose looks up at you blearily. “Well the other quadransh are jush so confushing.”

“And fun.” You grin.

“And fashinaation shertainly,” she nods back. “I jush don know if I can do it assh a human.”

“I think we can give it the old college try,” you say. “I mean, who was Captain Kirk if not the universal manifestation of the human spirit--no, the human _will_ , to romance aliens everywhere, no matter what? So, you know, you have it in you. And if I remember you telling me right, Terezi and Dave are hearts. But that doesn't... Hm...” You briefly wonder about setting her up with the troll sitting right in front of you. You spend a couple seconds contemplating the idea, but make sure to stop staring before anyone notices.

**“** Sho, you want me to be the daring shatarship captian? Wooing all the weird green damshels I can find?”

“And gray ‘damshels’ too.”

“Yesh of course. Shomehow the script writers didn't know about trolls. I can't imagshine why.”

You do think that you would set the other Rose up with a cherub if given the chance though. Matching the amatuer psychologist with an honest to God multiple personality disorder would be interesting. You chat back and forth about  _ Star Trek  _ a bit--you mostly know it from various licensed novels, to be honest--before the food arrives and Karkat pulls out a roast cluckbeast.

Rose looks up in excitement. “Oooh! Sho that's what the real thing is like!”

Food is dispensed and you all eagerly dig in, despite the essentially universal superfluousness of actually consuming dream food.

“T-that. Tasstes just liike chicken,” Rose opines. “I shuppose I shouln’t be surpr-ised.”

“What’s a chicken?” Karkat asks.

“Our kind of cluckbeast.”

“Isht Earth human farmsh fowl that makesh a ‘cluck’ nois.”

“Sounds like a cluckbeast,” Karkat confirms.

“Yep. That’s why we say ‘our kind of cluckbeast.’”

“No, you called it a ‘chicken’, not a ‘human kind of cluckbeast’,” Karkat insists.

“Thatsh wha we ushed to call it on Earth. Alsho calling it ‘our cluckbeast’ doeshnt make you sound at all like a bad si-fi alien.”

“It’s not anyone’s cluckbeast,” says Karkat, clearly getting annoyed. “It’s just a cluckbeast.”

“Just a cluckbeast?” you ask with mock indignation. “Wow. I'm sure that cluckbeast had cluckbeast family. It wasn't ‘just a cluckbeast’ to them. A loving parent, a loving child, sibling. Possibly a humorous coworker at the local coop or chicken-managed co-op.”

“Are you ssshure?” Rose asks. “Thish is dream-kishen cluckbeast here.”

“Well okay, add ‘dream’ in front of those words. Loving dream-parent, dream-child, dream-coworker at the local dream-coop. I mean, they have to make dreams somewhere, right? Perhaps the horrorterrors employ dream-cluckbeasts to make them. That way they only have to pay their workers in dream-money. It's all... It's all an exploitation of the cluckatariat.”

You stare at your food for a bit, and shrug before taking another bite. “It's still pretty delicious though. It's a shame when morally difficult choices have one option that is decidedly less delicious than the other. It makes it hard to seriously consider whether the delicious choice is also the right one.”

“Thash why you rashialize the delishious chioshe.” Rose interjects before taking another bite of her own food.

Karkat, seeming a bit fed up with your philosophizing, decides to change the subject. “You know what would fix this cluckbeast?” he asks. “Grubsauce.”

“I’ve always wondered,” you begin. “Grubsauce. Is that made from actual troll grubs? Like, am I about to dispense babyjuice all over my hardworking and oppressed member of the cluckatariat?”

“Ew, what the fuck, no!” Karkat glares at you in apparent disgust. 

“Okay. That's good. I mean, with your ‘kill anybody with the wrong color of blood’ thing, I didn't know how bad the Condesce's rule was.”

Karkat takes out the bottle and starts reading from the label. "Migora's premium grubsauce is made from fattened tasty domesticated stock-grubs, freshly squeezed for extra flavor and bottled on site. Facility regularly inspected by inquisitorturers for contamination, bluh bluh. Shit, of course it's bad, but we don't  **eat** each other. Fuck. At least not if you're a non-psycho.”

“Then I guess wigglers have more rights than I assumed then. Sorry about that.”

“Ish not like they thresh them well,” says Rose. “Trollshare clashic r-strategists.”

Karkat shrugs. “Wigglers live in the brooding caverns and get fed by drones from hatching until pupation. Unhealthy ones get culled, just like pupated trolls, and more get culled after pupation, during the trials. It's not like wigglers are real trolls. They don't need much except shelter and food. Do  _ human _ grubs have rights?”

“More or less. They don't have the same right to self-determination, but otherwise, yeah."

“Human babbies have it sooo eashy. Parensh have to give them closhes and food and everorything.”

“Of course,” you respond. “There was a lengthy period of our history where you named a kid Timmy because the past five Timmys just didn't make it past four weeks. We were pretty good about redundant names or whatever. Reduce reuse and recycle, right?”

Karkat looks at you quizzically. “You name wigglers after other wigglers?”

“Well if you have a wiggler, and that wiggler died, then it  _ was _ tradition that you'd give the next wiggler the same name.”

“Ish not as bad as the Romansh. They jusht named their kidsh number seven or whatever.”

“But what about when lots of wigglers die,” questions Karkat. “Do you keep track of the order, or what?”

“We generally have one at a time. Also, internal gestation. Like, uh, hoofbeasts. I... think.”

“Wait,  _ hoofbeasts _ ? Really?” Karkat grimaces. “Oh shit. That’s really fucking nasty. You really do that?”

“Yes we really do that. And believe me, I'm not overly fond of the idea of some sort of internal parasite growing inside me for nine months. But we kind of had a death-by-big-rock situation go down on everyone before we could make an alternative.”

“Nine months? Shit.”

“Yesh. Human femalsh get the short end of that Earth-tree-piece,” Rose slurs out.

“Guess you don't have to worry about that, hm?”

“Well not wish Kananaya anywaysh. At leasht I don think so.”

“Wait,” Karkat interjects. “Only the females do it? I guess that makes sense. Hoofbeasts and some lusii have it that way, but it’s still bizarre.”

“Well doing it that way leaves ush with many fewer wigglersh and sho humansh invesht a lot of effort in keeping them alive.”

“Huh,” Karkat says. “Must be nice for them.”

Rose grins back at him. “The wigglers? Yesh. As I said, babbys have it sooooo easy.”

“Seriously,” you say. “Next time a baby cries, you should set it in front of the TV and put on a documentary about troll wigglers. Maybe that'll teach the little two-month-old to be freaking grateful.”

“Yesh! And teash it about xenoagoge at the same time!”

There is a pause in the conversation. Eventually, Karkat breaks it, addressing your counterpart. “I take it you’re flushed with Kanaya then?”

She nods. "Flushed like a just used exshrement dishposial unit. Oh wait. Thash a really terrible annology. Pleash don't tell her I ushed it.” Her head lulls to the side, and she passes out. Looks like she really has had too much to drink if it can put her to sleep in the middle of her sleep. You could go on, but that really marked the end of anything interesting going on at that kitchen party. Now you hear that some interesting stuff happened in the room upstairs. If only you could have been there.

===> ROSE: Be someone who could have been there

You are now Karkat. Oh gog this is awkward. Is Rose trying to turn your love life into some kind of third rate unscripted televised program? You glare at the door as they leave. At least you hope they’ve left. They’re almost as bad as your lusus.

“Soooooooo…” says Jade. “Do you want to sit down?”

Fine. If you’re going to participate in this fucking steam-trailer crash of a date you might as well make it respectable. You glance around and recall that your room is full of sharp edges not remotely suitable for a pile. You eventually settle on pulling a chair out of your sylladex and planting yourself firmly upon it.

“Well that's handy. Do you happen to have another one of those?”

“My desk has one,” you reply. You watch as she goes off to grab it, trying to come up with something to say. This “blind date” thing is excruciating. Only a species a few lobes short in the pan could possibly think that this was ever a decent romantic idea. You watch as Jade walks back with the chair to sit down, and sit there dumbfounded like a pan-fried idiot, having no idea what to say to her.

"So... that was some scary news I guess," Jade says after she’s settled herself next to you.

You stare at your hands. Could she have been right? Are you really dying? “I don’t know what to think,” you say. “I don’t feel like I’m dying. I feel fine. I haven’t been sick since I entered the game, and that‘s the longest that I’ve ever not been sick.” 

“Well that's good. Maybe it won't be so bad.”

“But I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. This is hoofbeastshit.”

“Well…” she says. “I don't know. What do you  _ want _ to be doing?”

“I don't know,” you reply. “Am I supposed to be happy because no one I  _ hope _ is going to kill me for being a mutant, or am I supposed to be panicking because I might get cancer and die slowly- except wait, forget it. I'm not gonna fucking die slowly. Fuck that.”

**“** Well you always knew you were going to die eventually, right? I mean trolls aren't immortal are they? I know that being reminded of it can be scary.”

“No, but god, that's not something most people like to think about. Anyway, I was hoping that I'd have a limeblood's lifespan. I never really knew, though. For all I knew, I'd live as long as a tyrian, or as short as a lowblood. Who knows? I don't know. I'm eight sweeps old. At nine they take you off world to join society at large. I mean, I never took my survival for granted. I don't think even highbloods have that luxury. But I had to hope. Stupid hope.”

Jade looks back at you, concern evident in her eyes. “Well it sounds like they don't know for sure. And maybe there's something that can be done. As I understand it, the game provides all sorts of useful solutions to various problems.”

“Maybe,” you grumble. “But that’s just for the main timeline, isn’t it? Not us in the doomed timelines. I’m a dead troll walking.”

“I don't know. Maybe. So what do you do with it then?”

You stare back at her. “With what?”

“With your situation. You talked about not having a career. Are there things you want to accomplish with your life?”

“What's there to accomplish?” you gripe. “Meteor, dreambubbles, I don't see any reason for anything at this point. I was holding on to the hope that there was still a purpose to this whole fucking game, some purpose for my whole idiotic life, but nope! Just.... nothing! Just the universe flipping me a big 'fuck you!'”

“It can't be that bad, can it? I mean some of that sickness you had sounds really awful, but surely you've had friends to help make the rest worthwhile?”

“I've had friends, sure,” you say. “They all ended up in the game too, and most of them are here now. As in, the dream bubbles. I just... I fucked up so bad. They died because of my bad leadership. Probably. I don't know. It was probably inevitable, like everything else in paradox space.” And there you have it. They’re all dead, and you’re not even sure if you are important enough for it to be your fault. “What are we doing,” you ask. “We're just along for the ride. We get on, we like the ride or we don't, and then we get off. It's not about the sickness or friends, it's about what I'm living for, and I don't really even... I mean, there's hardly a difference, right? I see ghosts every time I sleep anyway. So what's the point?”

You look back at Jade, expecting that your pathetic outburst will have scared her off by this point, but you find her still sitting next to you, looking back at you with flat white eyes.

“Well I guess that's really the question,” she says. “What do you want to do with yourself? I mean, I guess I'm dead and it's not as bad as I would have thought. But I would have liked to have had a chance to meet my friends before I died, and maybe actually gotten a chance to play sburb.” She looks at you more intently, “what do you want to do?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Well maybe you should think about it then.  I could help come up with ideas if you like.”

“Like what,” you ask. “Gardening?”

Jade seems to lighten up at the idea. "Maybe. Are you interested in gardening? I could help you get started."

“I’ve… never tried it,” you confess.

Jade smiles back at you. “Well it's nice. Planning and watching your hard work pay off as things grow. But you shouldn't do it just because I like it. You should find something that you want to do.”

“I don’t fucking know.” You are about ready to scream in frustration. “I like to read and watch movies. God that sounds so fucking pathetic.”

Somehow Jade smiles. "No it isn't. It sounds nice. Reminds me of John."

“It’s not a life, though. It’s just a- thing. A Hobby. I don’t know.”

“Well those are important,” Jade says. “It's good to have a few easy things that make you happy. But I understand. You want to accomplish something.”

“I guess,” you say. “I thought I did. Used to. I don’t know. I- I thought I was going to accomplish something. It wasn’t wanting, it was an expectation.”

“Well maybe you still can,” she says. “But it would probably help if you had some idea of what you wanted to accomplish.”

“I don’t know. What is there worth accomplishing? We were going to make a fucking universe, and I gave it fucking cancer! Now we’re on a rock, and we get to talk to ghosts, which is f-” you stop yourself. “Which is nice.”

Fuck. Did you almost just say that to her? Jegus. But somehow she seems to smile back at you anyway as she replies. “So, where does that leave you? Can you try to fix your mistake?”

“It’s too late for that. The universe is made, it’s done! That spaceship is flown.” You cross your arms in frustration. “And from what Rose and Dave told me, it’s probably also been destroyed.”

“Oh. I guess that makes it harder to fix.” Jade thinks for a bit before continuing. “Are there other things you might try to do?  I guess creating new universes isn't a thing you get many chances at is it?”

“It’s not fucking likely to happen again, no.”

“OK. OK. No need to be like that. Is there something else you can do then? Maybe this is silly, but what exactly about creating a universe appealed to you?”

“I liked the thought of being in control, I guess. Instead of completely at the non-existent mercy of a galaxy-spanning empire, I could be the one  _ in _ control. Be the leader. Be a  _ better _ leader. But I've well displayed how good I am at that.”

“Well, on the bright side,” Jade says, “it sounds like now you finally are in control of things. Though I guess I don’t know what the leadership situation looks like on the asteroid.”

“I think Rose is the leader, maybe. I don't know. I gave up after half of us killed the other half. Rose was the leader because Rose was directing the asteroid but now there's nothing to lead just us on a fucking hunk of rock with all of paradox space stretching infinitely to all sides.”

Jade is wearing a somewhat horrified expression on her face.

“What?” you ask.

“Sorry, I guess I’m just a little behind on things, and hadn’t realized the full extent of what you’ve been through.”

You grunt. “It’s okay. I guess there’s nothing wrong with paradox space, except that unless you’re Lord ‘Sniff-a-nook’ English, it can’t really be changed. So accomplishments don’t mean anything.” Jade’s still looking at you expectantly, like you can just pop out revelations on demand. You guess you should at least try to think of something. “I could try to stop Lord English, but I think Meenah is taking that on. I also heard some rumors about Vriska, but who the fuck knows. I don’t fucking know.” I mean what does Jade expect you to say? Clearly she’s going to figure out what a mess you are and do the only remotely reasonable thing and leave any minute now.

But Jade is still just sitting there looking back at you, actually listening to your hoofbeastshit. “Well…” she says “that does sound important. But, not to repeat myself too much, is that what you  _ want _ to be doing?”

“It doesn’t seem like something I  _ can _ do, not living in the dreambubbles all the time.” You lean back in your chair to stare at the ceiling. “Maybe I should just die and do that.”

“Would dying really make things any easier?” Jade reaches over and puts a hand on your shoulder.

“I don’t fucking know.” You close your eyes and just imagine it. How easy it would be to just give up. How you could just give in and- “No.” You straighten your chair again. “No, none of this. This is moping. I don’t fucking  _ do _ moping. I get angry!” 

You stand up out of your chair. “I’m angry at paradox space for handing me such a shitty set of dice! You know what? Fuck you, paradox space! Maybe Lord Nooksniffer has the right idea. Let’s just destroy the whole gogdamn thing.”

Jade startles. “You don’t really mean that do you?”

“Like fuck I do. I’m not Eridan.” You slump back down into your chair. “I just wanted to create a universe, is that too much to ask?”

“Well there has to be something else that you can do. Maybe find another session and help them out?”

Wouldn’t that be nice. “What’s the chance of that happening,” you snort. “Rose has no clue where we are. Sure, if we just so happen to run into another session, fine.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t really know what your situation is, but is that something you would still want to do?”

You sigh. “Our situation is that me, Rose, Dave, Terezi, Kanaya, and Gamzee are all living on a meteor. We’ve been living there for over a sweep. So there’s no universe, there no chance in fuck of a new universe. There’s just the meteor. It’s like a little self-contained planet going nowhere.” Wait a second. It really is like that, isn’t it? “It’s like the smallest fucking universe you’ve ever seen. Oh my god. What the fuck. It’s the most horrible kind of universe. It’s tiny. But fuck, it’s a universe. A tiny pathetic nookstain universe.” Oh gog Jade is staring back at you with that giant, adorable, goofy grin of hers. “I- I don’t think I thought this far. Shit. It needs to last. Fuck! If this is my universe, I’m not going to lose it again!”

“So, what are you going to do about it?” Jade asks.

“I don’t know. I need a plan. I need a plan!” Holy shit. This is it. It was in front of your ganderbulbs the whole time.

“Well,” says Jade, “it sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Yeah, I- Shit.” You turn back to see Jade with that weird blunt-toothed human smile plastered all over her face. Did she just do that? Did you two really just- “That was amazing. Fucking incredible.”

She smiles back at you. “I’m glad I could help.”

Oh god, you can hardly believe this. It’s been too long since you’ve had a moirail. “So was it good for you too?”

You look expectantly at Jade as she- sorta just stares at you.

“Oh,  wait, sorry, was this the blind date thing that Rose mentioned? I was a bit confused by that part.”

Oh fuck. That was not at all smooth. That was a stupid thing to say. “I mean the feelings jam…” Fuck. She’s still giving you that confused look. “It was too intense for the first date, wasn’t it? Fuck. I just felt that we knew each other even though we hadn’t met before in person. So I felt- Fuck. I don’t want this to get around. I’m not easy.” Fuck she’s not saying anything. “Fuck, I am easy. I almost jammed with that other human too. Ha ha ha. Nice Karkat, nice.” Shit. You probably shouldn’t have just said that.

And Jade just blinks at you a few times. Oh God, are you really that pathetic? “Karkat, I’m really sorry, I think I’m missing something here.” She runs her left hand along her right shoulder, “I mean, I was happy to help out, and I’m glad that you seem to be doing better. Just the whole blind date thing kinda confuses me. It just seemed like you needed a friend.”

Shit, do you really have to explain? “The Maid of Blood was setting us up on a pale date.”

“A-a what?”

“I know you humans have different quadrants. Let’s see if I remember…” Shit. What was it the Maid told you? “Storage? Fillya? Something like the philia quadrant?” Jade’s still giving you a funny look. “I think that’s what you humans call moirallegiance, right? Philia?”

“Sorry, I’m very confused here. Quadrant?”

“Right, you call them ‘the four loves’ since you don’t have blackrom somehow. The Maid of Blood told me they were philia, eros, storge, and agape. Am I missing some?” Jade just blinks at you again. “Was she just tugging my frond? Shit. She was, wasn’t she?”

“Oh, sorry, that sounds kinda familiar, but I don’t really remember it. Could you just try to describe things from scratch maybe?”

You can’t believe that you have to do this again. Okay, fine. So you try your best to go over the very basics of romantic theory, describing concupiscent versus conciliatory and red versus black.”...Anyway, the pale quadrant is moirallegiance, and it’s a conciliatory, red relationship. Which means it’s about helping each other reach emotional stability. Usually one of the trolls- people- in the relationship is more unstable than the other, but that’s not always true. Moirails are always there for each other. Pale is… emotionally intimate, and physically affectionate, but never sexual. That’s kept for the flushed quadrant.”

And then you pause, and spend the longest seconds of your life watching Jade consider what you just told her. Eventually, though she smiles. “Huh. I guess  that does sorta describe what we were doing, doesn’t it?”

You let out a long, deep breath. You can feel the muscles in your arms and back unclenching. “You mean you’re okay with that?”

Another grin, “Sure. It’s just that humans don’t usually think of such things as romantic relationships,” she says. “Which doesn’t mean that I’m opposed to doing so,” she hurries to add. “I’m just worried that I might not fully understand what you mean, and I don’t want to accidentally end up hurting you.”

You take a deep breath. OK. You can do this. “I mean… I mean I’m feeling pale for you. There it is. In the open. My diamonds are bared.”

You wait nervously as she thinks it over. If she says “no”, you’ll look like an asshole. Shit, you shouldn’t have-

“OK, sure,” she says. “I’m in. But this whole thing  _ is _ still a bit confusing for me and it might take some more talking to figure things out.”

She agreed? Oh god, your stupid smile is probably as awkward and unnaturally gigantic as her’s is. “I’m- Thank you! Ha!”

She laughs. “You’re welcome. It’s good to see that you’re feeling better.”

“I’m feeling motherfucking fantastic. Better than I have all sweep.” And to your surprise, you actually mean it.

Jade- your moirail (you have a moirail!)- grins back at you. “So do we hug now or…?” You hold out your arms in offering, and are rewarded when she leaps into them. You hold her to you, and for the first time in a long time you feel… happy. You might actually make it through this.


End file.
